


Ave, Imperatrix

by Maiden_of_Asgard



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Dark Side Rey, Empress Rey, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Forced Marriage, Inappropriate Use of the Force, Jakku, POV Ben Solo, Runaway Padawan Ben Solo, Scavenger Ben Solo, Sith Rey, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker Spoilers, The Force Ships It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-08
Updated: 2020-04-12
Packaged: 2021-02-27 13:01:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22177480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maiden_of_Asgard/pseuds/Maiden_of_Asgard
Summary: Runaway Padawan Ben Solo lives in self-exile after fleeing his uncle’s Jedi Temple in the wake of disaster. For years, he’s hopped from place to place, doing his very best to stay far away from the affairs of the New Republic and the burgeoning return of the Empire, spearheaded by the militant First Order, but strange dreams continue to plague him.When he’s captured by First Order troops on Jakku and brought before their mysterious new empress, Ben is offered two choices, neither of which are particularly appealing: help her finish off the remaining Jedi, or die.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 33
Kudos: 145





	1. I

His day, like any other, started with a trip into the nearest settlement to see which ships were coming and going. The ruins of the old AT-AT where he’d made his home were far out in the badlands of Jakku, but he didn’t like the feeling of isolation that came with living so far from civilization, even if it was a necessary precaution. Moreover, he thought it best to know if any Republic ships made it this far into the reaches of the Inner Rim, just in case anyone was still bothering to hunt for him. 

He scratched another tally onto the metal wall beside his pallet and hopped onto his speeder, rolling his shoulders. It was a cramped, miserable sort of existence, a far cry from the mansions and lavish apartments where he’d spent his early years, but he didn’t know where else he could go. He’d almost been retrieved on Nar Shaddaa, and again on Bespin. His mother was far more persistent in her attempts to speak with him now than she had been when he was an adolescent, in what seemed to him to be the cruelest sort of irony. 

Ben Solo grimaced as sand stung his bare cheeks, reaching to tug his scarf up to shield his face. 

He couldn’t go back. 

When he fled the ruins of his hut at the Jedi Temple, he hadn’t even had a moment to grab some credits to take with him - not that he was supposed to have credits with him, anyway. Padawans weren’t  _ supposed _ to crave material possessions. He’d regretted it, in the years since; his ship  _ Grimtaash _ hadn’t held any sort of useful supplies, and Ben had never in his life been alone and starving. 

He’d considered returning to his mother, briefly, but he knew no one would believe him. Luke Skywalker’s Jedi Temple was gone in flames, his fellow students dead. When he’d first fled, Ben hadn’t even known that his uncle still survived, though he’d since felt Luke reaching out to find him through the Force. 

_ Hunting him.  _

The light had cast him aside, and the dark offered him refuge, but Ben didn’t trust the voices in his head any more than he trusted his former Master, and so he’d sent himself into exile. Having a  _ destiny _ wasn’t all that it was cracked up to be, in his opinion. 

He just wanted to be free. 

Reflexively, he patted the back of his vest when he hopped off of his speeder, making sure his lightsaber was still safely tucked away. He couldn’t bring himself to leave it behind, even if keeping it on him at all times put him at risk of discovery. If he was searched, a lightsaber would raise all sorts of questions that he didn’t particularly want to answer. 

Even somewhere as remote as Jakku, people still asked questions. There was an inherent sort of mistrust bred into the people who made the wasteland their home, though, an inclination to just assume that what anyone said was most likely a lie, or at best, a half-truth. He did have to appreciate that about it; people might not actually  _ believe _ that he was Jacen, an orphaned nobody from Tatooine who’d traded one miserable desert planet for another, but they were far more likely to assume that he simply owed money to the Hutts than they were to suspect that he might actually be the runaway son of Senator Leia Organa, that he was the last Prince of Alderaan… It was a meaningless title, but more of a title than anyone else on Jakku possessed, certainly. 

Ben was starving. It was taking time, but every day, he grew more and more hungry, and his temper burned hotter as his time on Jakku passed. He’d leave, if he only had an idea of somewhere else he could go. He’d managed to escape notice for years on Jakku, longer than any of the other worlds where he’d tried to hide. 

The only stroke of luck that he’d had so far was that the badlands were liberally scattered with the wreckage of decades-old spacecraft, remnants of a final battle between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance some thirty years earlier. He’d grown up with dreams of being a pilot, spending every minute possible crawling around and inside his father’s  _ Millennium Falcon, _ and he knew ships well enough to have developed a keen eye for which parts were still salvageable. 

He liked to think of it as salvaging -  _ scavenging _ was more like it, picking any vital remains from the long-dead corpses of Star Destroyers and X-Wings, sometimes with the bones of their crew still scattered in the sand. 

_ Ben Solo, destined for greatness, strong in the Force,  _ he thought sourly, heaving a bag of spare parts over his shoulder,  _ reduced to a scavenger, begging for scraps.  _

Arguing with the traders in the settlement always left him seething; the darker parts of him urged him to simply take what he wanted and leave anyone who dared to argue with a few less limbs. He had the capability, and he wouldn’t feel particularly guilty about it. The only thing that helped him to tamp down his anger, in those moments of darkness, was to remember that the more he reached out to use the Force, the more likely it was that someone would find him. 

And so, when a miserable Crolute named Unkar Plutt tried to cheat him of the credits he’d been promised yet again, Ben simply grit his teeth and began to collect the power converters back into his bag, imagining how satisfying it would be to throw Plutt through the back wall of his shop. 

“What’s that?” Plutt demanded, seemingly offended. “I said I’d take them.”

“You’ll take them for less than a fifteenth of what they’re worth. I think I’ll see what the First Order suppliers can offer me.” It was a bluff - Ben had no intention of getting anywhere near any sort of political factions, no matter their loyalties or aims, but it did give him a vicious sort of entertainment to see Plutt splutter and fume. “I wasn’t born on this trash heap,” Ben continued. “I know that the price of Imperial tech is skyrocketing.”

“After all that I’ve done for you, boy—”

“You’re going to pay me what you owe me,” Ben interrupted, deciding that the slightest hint of Force-persuasion couldn’t be too terrible of a risk, “and you’re going to add a few credits for my time.”

“I’m going to pay you,” Plutt said, and even the Force couldn’t knock the sourness from his tone. He slammed the credits down on the counter. “Here’s a few extra for your time, scavenger.”

Ben pushed the bag under Plutt’s barred window and shoved the credits in his pocket. “Nice doing business with you, Blobfish,” he said, and then he left before his irritation could get the better of him. He shouldn’t have used the Force… but it had felt  _ good,  _ especially after avoiding it for so long. It was a mistake, though, because it wasn’t enough to truly satisfy him, and now he wanted  _ more. _

He saw some of Plutt’s thugs watching him as he wandered through Niima Outpost, but they kept their distance. They’d tried to rough him up once, back when he’d first arrived on Jakku, and after he’d nearly beaten two of them to a pulp, they remained wary. Their apprehension afforded him a bit more freedom than many of the other unfortunate souls who scavenged the graveyard of ships on Jakku, but he was constantly on-edge, certain that they’d eventually get the courage to try again.

The tavern in Niima Outpost was more of a dilapidated hut than any sort of reputable establishment, but Ben needed a drink, so he pushed aside the beaded curtain and stooped to enter the door, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the dim light. Several of the patrons glanced up at him when he stepped inside, but quickly looked away; he’d almost hoped for someone new to challenge him to a game of dice, but everyone present had lost to him a few times too many.

He’d always been suspiciously lucky in games of chance.

Ben took a seat in the back of the room and watched as people wandered in and out, nursing a drink that was almost certainly watered-down to a pitiful degree. People always seemed to gossip when they were drunk, particularly tucked away in a dark hidey-hole such as this, and they’d become the best source of information he had when it came to what was happening in the rest of the galaxy.

The news seemed to be progressively worse. The First Order had been nothing more than a fledgling military junta when he’d fled the Jedi Temple - or that was what the New Republic had believed, at least - but it seemed that its influence was spreading across the galaxy more and more with each day that passed. It was good for business, since the First Order’s ships were more or less the same as the Star Destroyers of the Empire, but Ben worried that another full-scale war was on the horizon. 

Many of the leading senators had firmly insisted that the Republic was safe, that any threats of imperialism were simply the dying remnants of those who had been loyal to Emperor Palpatine. Ben had always suspected that his mother wasn’t as convinced of the Republic’s security as the rest, especially when she began to subtly argue for reforming the Republic’s standing army. He wondered if the other senators had finally begun to listen to her.

There were whispers that a new power had risen within the ranks of the First Order, and Ben’s ears perked up. “ _ Jen’ari,” _ one of the scavengers sitting at the bar whispered. 

Intrigued, Ben stood and sidled over to the bar under the guise of ordering another drink, eager to find out why a Abednedo from Jakku would have any business talking about Dark Lords of the Sith. He leaned against the bar as casually as he could, frustrated that he’d been reduced to eavesdropping, when it would’ve been so simple to simply pry into their minds.  _ Don’t do it,  _ he told himself.  _ Don’t give into the temptation.  _ Ben knew - had known, for years - that the First Order was associated with the dark side of the Force. Their Supreme Leader Snoke had offered him refuge from the Jedi, and Ben knew he’d made a powerful enemy when he refused.

But a Sith… Snoke wasn’t a Sith, and if the Sith were on the rise once again, then he’d need to be doubly careful. He heard the word ‘uncharted,’ next, and his curiosity finally got the better of him. “What’s uncharted?” he asked. “I thought the First Order was shipping goods to Ilum.”

The Abednedo turned to him. “Nobody knows,” the taller of the two said. “But they’re manufacturing somewhere off the star-maps. Not all those supplies are making it to Ilum.”

“Says who?”

“A friend.”

Ben scoffed and turned back to his drink.  _ Just rumors, _ he told himself. Everyone loved to whisper about dark, mysterious worlds that a friend-of-a-friend’s-cousin had supposedly stumbled across, hidden and uncharted for millenia. The Sith were dead and gone, and they had been for three decades. Some treasure hunter had likely uncovered a holocron or a relic inscribed with ur-Kittât and decided to spin tall-tales about the return of the Sith.

Still, hearing Sith spoken aloud left him feeling oddly unsettled, and he quickly drained his drink and headed out into the sun and sand, eager to escape the claustrophobic darkness of the tavern. His speeder was right where he’d left it - another benefit of being known as the madman who wasn’t afraid to fight Unkar Plutt’s thugs. A passing constable nodded at him; Ben didn’t return the gesture.

He refused to by rations directly from Unkar Plutt, even though it meant travelling for several kilometers to reach any other refueling stations where he might find someone who was willing to bargain away precious food and water for credits. It was a matter of pride, and despite his disgrace and exile, Ben Solo’s pride remained resolute. 

The trip to purchase supplies took the better part of the day, and evening winds were sweeping across the dunes by the time he made it back to his hideaway. He methodically rehydrated and devoured one of the ration packs, too hungry to be picky about the flavor. Hunger, he was quickly learning, was a very powerful thing.

He’d brought with him very little in the way of entertainment, but he wasn’t particularly keen on going to bed and staring at the dark ceiling beside his pallet for hours on end, so he took out his lightsaber and decided to practice forms. He didn’t actually ignite it, given the possibility of the brilliant blue glow being spotted across the rapidly-darkening desert, but it was comforting to at least pretend.  _ Form V, Djem So, Falling Avalanche,  _ he mentally recited, imagining the satisfaction bringing his lightsaber down on Unkar Plutt’s head with a crushing blow... 

It wasn’t the sort of thought that he should entertain, really, but Ben had already proven himself incapable of living up to the ideals and codes of the Jedi. One more failing couldn’t possibly matter.

The wind-whipped sand eventually became too irritating for him to bear, and so he retreated back inside his AT-AT, shaking grit from his clothes. Training had been a mistake; it had only left him hungry again, and he still felt just as restless. Frustrated, he curled up on top of his blanket and cracked open one of the Jedi texts he’d taken with him when he’d left the Temple, but none of the wisdom it contained struck him as particularly useful, just like the first time he’d read it, years ago.

_ Peace is a lie, _ a voice lost somewhere deep in the recesses of his mind whispered.  _ There is only passion.  _

Ben jolted and tossed the book aside, realizing that he’d begun to doze off while staring at a beautifully-calligraphed version of the Jedi Code. “So,” he said, “you’re back.”

The voice didn’t respond, nor was he expecting any response, but acknowledging it aloud made him feel a bit less unsettled by it, anyway. He heard the voice in his dreams, shapeless and nameless, the latest variation of the dark whispers he’d heard in his mind for as long as he could remember.

He’d once overheard his mother telling his uncle that she’d been able to sense the darkness raging inside of him before he’d even been born. Ben doubted he’d ever forget the way her voice sounded, the guilt and the fear. His mother was  _ afraid _ of him. 

And she’d been right to be.

_ “Like Vader,” _ he’d heard his father hiss in another argument, shortly after a young Ben had accidentally shattered the windows in the Organa-Solo family’s apartment on Corellia. Ben knew that he wasn’t meant to overhear the conversation, that Han Solo would’ve been horrified if he’d known, that he’d reassure Ben that he hadn’t meant it… but Ben knew it was true. He craved the darkness, craved power and emotion and  _ passion, _ all things that he’d been taught to fear.

That he would hear the voice in his dreams that night was almost a certainty. He’d never been a sound sleeper, and the problemed seemed to only worsen with each passing year. No matter how carefully he ignored the lure of the Force during the day, at night, his mind was relatively unguarded and susceptible. He despised the loss of control, and it made him reluctant to even attempt to sleep, but his body was exhausted, and so Ben eventually succumbed, still on top of his blanket and fully-dressed.

In sleep, the voice was clearer, more distinctly-feminine, and the form that it came from was very clearly sitting upon some sort of massive, ancient throne.  _ “There you are,” _ it said, clearly satisfied.  _ “You are very difficult to find, Skywalker.” _

“I’m not a Skywalker,” he argued, trying to move closer to the shadowed form, but finding that the closer he came, the darker and more indistinguishable it became. “I’m—”

“Solo. Ben Solo.” There was a laugh, cold and mirthless. “The son of a princess and a smuggler,  _ heir _ to Darth Vader. I know who you are. I know what you can become. I’m going to find you.”

Ben squinted. The form on the throne seemed small, but the power he sensed was disproportionately massive, which only made the prospect of revealing its source all the more enticing. “Who are you?” he asked, certain that it was no longer the First Order’s Supreme Leader on the other end of these mind-games. When the voice didn’t respond, he took a step closer. “Who are you, _ Jen’ari? _ ”

He sensed a flicker of surprise. 

“So,” he said, “the rumors are true? A new Dark Lord of the Sith has risen to seize control of the galaxy. You’re smaller than I expected.”

“The Force is strong in you,” the shadow on the throne said, ignoring him. “I’ve never sensed so much raw power. You’re very good at hiding it, but I’m getting closer every day.”

Ben was a little taken aback by how casual it sounded. “Who are you?” There was a pause, and the shadow grew taller, as if it had stood and begun to make its way towards him. “Who  _ are _ you?” he demanded again, jerking away when the shadow reached out to touch him, thrown back into the waking world as his head cracked against the metal wall beside his bed.

He cursed and rubbed the back of his head, absently noting that he probably needed to cut his hair. It was starting to get long enough that the wind worked knots into it every time he stepped outside, which was yet another frustration he didn’t particularly feel like dealing with in his current mood. 

She’d touched him - because he’d known, as soon as her hand grabbed his wrist, that it was a woman who’d been plaguing his dreams - a  _ human _ woman, and one strong with the Force. His mind raced, and he cursed again, the Old Corellian flowing as freely as it had from Han Solo’s lips whenever he’d lost a wager. It was the first time there had been any sort of physical contact in his dreams, and there were tiny pink scratches where her nails had dug into his skin, in case there was any doubt that it hadn’t just been an ordinary nightmare. 

Though, truthfully, Ben wasn’t entirely certain that he’d ever had an ‘ordinary’ nightmare. 

He told himself that there was no way she could find him from so short a connection, not with how quickly he’d shut her out, but dread pricked at his heart. There was some measure of excited curiosity there, as well, for even the great Luke Skywalker hadn’t given off such a roaring inferno of power as the girl on the throne. 

_ Intoxicating,  _ some part of him mused, though it was a thought he quickly quashed. That was the nature of the dark side, wasn’t it, to seem alluring?

He didn’t sleep for the rest of the night. Instead, he tried to meditate, becoming increasingly irate the more he struggled to soothe his chaotic mind. He could almost imagine his uncle standing beside him, shaking his head in disapproval and disappointment. 

When the morning came, Ben took his speeder back into Niima Outpost, more anxious than ever to hear any news about the movements of the First Order. If the girl was telling the truth, if there  _ was _ a Sith power behind their insidious spread across the galaxy, then the sheer fact of his bloodline made him a very likely target to either kill or turn to the dark side. 

_ “Heir to Darth Vader,” _ she’d mockingly called him.  _ “Skywalker.” _

His reconnaissance proved fruitless, though his sense of unease continued to grow, and when he returned to his AT-AT, he risked igniting his lightsaber to truly practice for the first time in months, certain that he might soon find a reason to use it. 

Mediation continued to fail him, and, fearing that the girl would manage to bridge with his mind if he slept, Ben resolved to simply stay awake for as long as humanly possible. He scratched verses onto the wall, longing for his old calligraphy set, which had been a birthday gift from his mother two years before he’d been sent away to train as a Jedi Padawan. He imagined it lay crushed in the ruins of his hut, along with the rest of his belongings. 

He’d never see it again. It had been a priceless, irreplaceable thing, a relic made of chinar wood on Alderaan in the days before the Galactic Empire, given to his mother by an old senator who’d known her when she was very small. It had been a treasure, a miraculous physical remnant of a world that had been destroyed long before his birth. She could’ve kept it for herself, but she’d given it to him, instead, trusting him to keep it safe, even as a reckless boy of eight. 

_ This is why the Jedi forbid attachment, _ he told himself, feeling foolish for being so sentimental about an  _ object _ \- a mere wooden box. There were much bigger problems to worry about, including the cold war that sounded like it might not stay cold for much longer, and the unknown Sith who was apparently intent on tracking him down to murder him.

Ben rubbed his thumb across the scratches on his wrist. Some part of him hoped that she’d find him, that he’d finally have a chance to stand and fight, even if it killed him. 

He was tired of running.


	2. II

Despite his best efforts to remain alert, Ben had nearly dozed off again when there was suddenly a painful tear in the Force, so strong that it tore a ragged gasp from his lungs, even with all of his efforts to block it out. He clutched his chest, overwhelmed with a sense of loss and  _ emptiness, _ wondering if the girl from his dreams had discovered some new way to torment him. The feeling dimmed, but it lingered throughout the night, and for reasons he could not explain, Ben felt both compelled to flee and paralyzed by a fear of something he didn’t entirely understand.

He resolved to overcome such weak urges. 

He’d all but buried his ship  _ Grimtaash _ in the dunes in an effort to hide it away, unwilling to sell it, but certain that it would be too bright a lure for the other scavengers out prowling the dunes. The hatch was covered by only a thin layer of sand, enough that he could dig it free every once in a while to check on the interior and make sure all systems were still functioning. He’d need to use the Force to free the ship from the sand entirely, but Ben figured that if he was in enough of a hurry to merit such a rapid escape, using the Force would be the least of his worries.

When the sun finally rose after a sleepless night spent fretting over how he should spend the rest of his life, assuming it didn’t come to an abrupt and tragic end, Ben went outside and cleared the sand away from the hatch, crawling down into the  _ Grimtaash _ and settling into the pilot’s seat, sighing wistfully. He could try to keep flying forever, hopping from spaceport to spaceport; it wouldn’t be safe, really, showing his face to so many people who might possibly recognize him, but the thought of leaving the desert was a tempting one. 

The secondary systems flickered to life with the flip of a switch, and a lump formed in his throat when he saw that little red indicator on the communications system was flashing. He typically deleted any transmissions immediately, on the rare occasions that he powered up his ship, and that was  _ especially _ true when the code belonged to a craft he recognized. Ben swallowed, hesitantly reaching to hit the button that would delete the message still unheard... but he couldn’t do it. It had been so long since he’d heard his father’s voice.

But it wasn’t his father’s voice that came crackling across the speakers - it was his mother’s, and the sound quality was so poor that Ben wondered if the  _ Millennium Falcon _ had been in some sort of abnormal gravitational field when she’d sent it. There were chunks missing, static and an alarming amount of background noise drowned out bits and pieces, but what he could make out of the transmission was enough to make his blood run cold. 

_ “Ben… Hosnian System… gone. Luke is… and all the rest… killed… the First Order. Come home. Please, Ben, come—” _

The transmission ended abruptly, and he stared at the no-longer-blinking little indicator light, his fists clenched so tightly that his knuckles were white. She couldn’t possibly have meant that the Hosnian System - the  _ entire _ system - was gone, could she? It wasn’t possible. Even with a Death Star, it would’ve taken time, and he’d only been off the radar for a few years, surely not long enough for the First Order to have managed something so extraordinary right under the Republic’s nose. 

It wasn’t possible.

But if it was true…

Ben began to run diagnostics on his ship. He’d gone too long without checking to make sure that it was in full working order. He’d gotten complacent, resigned to spending his days hidden away in the sands of Jakku. His heart sank when he discovered that there was a leak in the coolant tank. “Sorry, buddy,” he said, patting the ship’s dash. “I’ll fix it. I promise.”

He climbed back out and checked to make sure that the hatch was secured behind him, his mind racing. He’d have to go back into Niima Outpost; it was the only place within a reasonable distance that might have the supplies he’d need for a long flight, and if the entire Hosnian System had been obliterated, then surely someone would have some sort of news about it. Maybe he’d misunderstood the transmission. Maybe he was worrying for nothing.

It was even windier than usual, and Ben took a moment to pull some of his more unruly strands of hair back into small braids to keep it out of his eyes.  _ “Alderaanian princes wear their hair long,” _ his mother had told him once, long ago. He wasn’t much of a prince, or an Alderaanian, but it was comforting to adhere to some of those old traditions that had meant so much to her, all the same.

Clearly, he was in an exceptionally nostalgic mood.

“You’re going to get yourself killed,” he told his reflection. “You should stay as far away as you possibly can. It could be a trap.”

But then he glanced down and caught sight of the scratch-marks on his wrist. He wasn’t going to be safe for much longer on Jakku, even if the destruction of the Hosnian System wasn’t true. He’d been in one place for too long.

Ben headed towards Niima Outpost, unable to shake the sense of foreboding that had stuck with him ever since he’d begun to hear the latest voice in his dreams.  _ Get the parts you need, pick up some supplies, and get out,  _ he told himself. He’d yet to decide if he planned to track down the _ Millennium Falcon, _ or if he was simply going to skip to some other backwater spaceport to lay low, but he figured he should be prepared for anything, either way. 

The settlement was quieter than usual, which should’ve been his first sign that something wasn’t quite right, but he parked his speeder and headed to Unkar Plutt’s stand, in such a hurry that he was willing to use the Force if needed to get what he’d come for and get back to the  _ Grimtaash.  _ When he turned the corner and spotted white-armored stormtroopers by the tavern, he ducked back and flattened himself against the wall, silently cursing his luck as he reached beneath his vest to retrieve his saber. If he could make it to his speeder without being seen, if he could beat them to his ship and get it free of the sand, he could be in hyperspace before they caught up to him. The missing parts would make it tricky, but he was nearly certain that the  _ Grimtaash _ could take a little more punishment before failing him—

“There’s one human like that who comes around,” he heard one of the scavengers lingering near the tavern say, breaking him from his reverie. “Tall. Hair’s black. Scavenges out in the badlands.”

“Name?” a stormtrooper asked.   
“Don’t remember. Doesn’t talk much.”

Ben took a deep breath, bracing himself to make the mad dash back to his speeder. He tried to focus, tentatively reaching out to see if he could sense more troopers. There was a distinct group of life-forms approaching from the hangar bays behind Plutt’s stand, heading directly towards him. Ben was about to run out of places to hide.

He sprinted off across the sand, feeling a perverse rush of joy when the blaster fire from behind gave him an excuse to ignite his saber. It felt  _ right,  _ and there was no point in bothering to hide it anymore, no point in distancing himself from the Force - they’d found him. 

Deflecting the blaster bolts was easy enough when they were behind him, but became significantly more difficult when speeders began to zip up beside him from the outpost, the troopers on their backs yelling at him to stop running and surrender. He was rusty and angry at himself for being so out of practice, and he raised his hand and sent one of them crashing into another without thinking, startled when the resulting explosion sent him tumbling into the sand. 

In the precious millisecond it took him to regain his footing, more had zipped up to take the place of those that he had destroyed, cutting him off from his own speeder sitting just on the outskirts of the settlement. Ben braced himself and prepared to fight, his anger and frustration churning and upsetting what little focus he’d managed to achieve.

“Stun  _ only,” _ one of the troopers in front of him barked when Ben deflected a bolt that was very clearly lethal, as it burned a hole clear through the armor of the trooper it struck after ricocheting off of his saber. “You’re under arrest.”   
“On whose authority?” Ben asked, trying to evaluate the best path of escape. The speeders were the problem; he was certain that he could outrun the troopers on foot.

“The Empress. Surrender.”

“Look, I think you’ve got the wrong guy. I don’t know any empresses,” he said, and then he launched himself backwards, flipping - though not  _ quite _ as gracefully as he would’ve liked - onto the speeder behind him, unseating its driver with a decisive thrust of his saber and taking off in the general direction of his AT-AT. It didn’t really matter if they followed him, he decided, as long as he made it to the  _ Grimtaash _ first.

And then he saw a dark, hooded figure standing against the horizon, and he  _ knew  _ without even seeing her face that the girl sitting on the throne was smiling in triumph.  _ Found you, Jedi,  _ the voice in his head whispered.  _ You’re mine. _

She wasn’t really there, he realized; the hooded figure was only an illusion, meant to strike dread and fear into his heart, to distract him, and so Ben pushed the speeder to its limits and blasted directly through it, shuddering at the cold that seemed to pierce deep into his bones. 

He heard her laugh, and his speeder jolted just as something struck him square between the shoulders, and all he could feel as he tumbled into the sands was a greedy, pervasive  _ darkness.  _

“Kriff,” he swore as his vision went black, realizing that he couldn’t move, couldn’t brace himself for impact, and then something crunched rather unpleasantly as he collided with the nearest dune, and after that, there was nothing. 

~

He was a groggy mess when he opened his eyes, his head feeling like it weighed as much as a water-soaked bantha. Ben groaned and tried to roll over, a little alarmed to discover that he couldn’t. There was a bitter taste in his mouth, and he was nearly certain that he’d been drugged. After a few moments of struggling, he finally managed to raise his head, and he discovered that there were surprisingly-thin silver manacles around his wrists. 

“That’s new,” he rasped, flexing his fingers. 

There was a stormtrooper stationed at the door not far from his feet. Ben couldn’t tell if he was in some sort of prison cell, or med-bay; it seemed tame for a prison cell, but maybe they were so certain of the efficacy of whatever they’d drugged him with that they weren’t worried about escape. 

He tried to reach out to the Force for guidance… but he felt nothing more than a dull throb, and the metal around his wrists grew warm. Ben glared at them and tried again, increasingly frustrated when he failed. 

“Where are we going?” he asked. 

“The Citadel,” the stormtrooper replied.

“Why?”

The stormtrooper turned slightly towards him. “Empress’s orders.”

Ben didn’t particularly care for being helpless on his back in front of the enemy. He clenched his jaw and hissed, pain and dizziness washing over him as he forced himself to sit up, and then he promptly fainted. 

~

He could hear the crew members in the hall outside discussing the approach to the final destination, and he could hear the anxiety that tinged their conversation. Whatever world it was that Ben was being taken to, it wasn’t one that the First Order seemed to enjoy. 

Ben wasn’t terribly surprised. The Sith weren’t known for being kind masters.

Another stormtrooper came into his cell when the shifts changed, and he noticed that she was more obviously watching him. He decided to try his luck. “What’s the planet?” he asked.

There was a pause. “Exegol,” she said.

“Where—”

“Unknown Regions.”

“I’ve never heard of it.”

“No,” the trooper replied, “you wouldn’t have. Wiped clean off the star maps.”

He sat up, relieved when the effort didn’t immediately leave him reeling. “You’re afraid,” he said. “Apprehensive.”

“You should be, too, scavenger.”

She wouldn’t reply to any of his questions after that, and Ben gave up. He leaned against the cool metal wall beside his cot, trying to assess the damage. There was a copper taste in his mouth, now that the bitterness of the sedative had faded. He licked his lips.  _ Blood.  _ His lip had been split, then, either in the crash or when they were dragging him onto the ship. 

_ That would explain the blood,  _ he mused, spying the darkening stains on his shirt as his head drooped. Maybe the sedative hadn’t faded as much as he’d thought. He studied the stormtrooper out of the corner of his eye, wondering if he’d be able to kill her before she shot him. In normal circumstances, he’d be fairly confident, but the circumstances were far from normal. Besides, where would he go, even if he did manage to get past her? They’d dragged him all the way out into the Unknown Regions in service to their empress; they weren’t going to let him go without a fight.

_ Another fight. _

And he had no idea what they’d done with his lightsaber. 

“Water?” he asked.

The stormtrooper didn’t reply.

“Please.” He leaned forward, trying to get her to look at him again, wincing when the muscles in his back seemed to protest.  _ That’s right, _ he thought.  _ Shot in the back. _ “It’s just water.”

“They said you can do things to people’s minds,” she said, staring resolutely forward. 

“If I could, do you really think I’d be here?”

“I’m not giving you anything, scavenger. Try asking the Empress.”

Ben’s nostrils flared as his temper spiked, but he shoved the emotion down deep inside of himself, trying to remember the Code.  _ Peace, _ he told himself.  _ Focus.  _

The ship shook and rattled when it entered the planet’s atmosphere, and even through the walls, he could hear the crack of lightning as they drew closer to the surface. He didn’t struggle when a frankly flattering troop of guards escorted him off of the ship, nor did he flinch away from the pervading darkness that seemed to seep from the very planet itself.  _ Fear leads to anger. _

He was already angry.

But when he was finally herded into a massive, darkened stone audience chamber, hordes of hooded figures watching expectantly from the shadows as he neared the imposing throne that sat alone on the far end of the chamber, he felt his resolve waver.

The girl on the throne smiled.

Ben could do nothing but stare. The Empress wasn’t at all what he’d expected. She was petite, dwarfed by the imposing throne upon which she sat, and she was young, too - maybe even younger than he was. He swallowed down the lump in his throat, dread seeping though his veins. She was  _ beautiful.  _ Cold and perfect, with her hood casting deep shadows across her sharp cheekbones. 

She seemed almost as shocked to finally see him in the flesh, a quick, shaky sort of breath escaping her parted lips, as if she’d been struck with similar unfamiliar sensations. A cold mask fell over her features almost immediately, though, and the stormtroopers forced him to his knees before retreating a safe distance from the throne. 

For a few moments, she simply stared back. “I won our game,” she finally said, standing and moving towards him, just as she’d done in his dream. “Ben Solo.”

“I didn’t know we were playing,” he replied, wishing that his lip wasn’t bleeding, because it made it much more difficult to maintain a cocky facade. “Best two out of three?”

Even with the cuffs dampening his connection to the Force, he could feel the troopers behind him grow tense. He assumed that the tone he was using with the Empress wasn’t entirely advisable. 

“I did warn you.”

“And Snoke?”

“Dead,” she replied. “He outlived his usefulness. Made careless mistakes, such as losing  _ you,  _ Ben Solo.” She crouched down in front of him, pulling back her hood as she did. The light revealed a thin hint of crimson around the edge of her irises, marring eyes that might’ve seemed warm and inviting, in better circumstances.

He couldn’t look away; it almost felt as if they were completely alone in the vast chamber, the world around him eerily muted. “You know my name. Tell me yours.”

“Rey.”

“Just Rey?”

Her smile was thin. “The past is dead,” she said, brushing her thumb across his split lip. A spark sped through him at the contact, and Ben flinched. “Just Rey.” She cradled his face in her hands, unexpectedly gentle. “Don’t be afraid,” she whispered, so softly that he wasn’t even sure if she’d said it aloud. “I feel it, too.”

Ben was disarmed by her touch and the tremor in her voice, left totally unprepared for the brutal pain that came when she tore into his mind, shredding through his memories like paper. It could’ve lasted only seconds, or maybe it was an eternity, but he was blinking back tears by the time she withdrew, her lips pressed into a thin line. Around his wrists, the cuffs burned, an unfortunate side-effect of his desperate attempts to use the Force to push her out. 

The Empress stood abruptly, pulling up her hood as she returned to sit upon her throne, leaving Ben sagging on the cold stone floor. “Take him to his cell,” she ordered, “and send out a transmission. I want the Resistance to know that he’s mine.”

Two stormtroopers yanked him to his feet and hauled him away, and her eyes didn’t leave his until the doors of the audience chamber slammed closed behind them, an ominous boom rolling down the shadowed hallways that led him closer to his destiny.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I love hearing from you guys! <3


	3. III

“I really don’t think that’s necessary,” Ben remarked as the stormtroopers tasked with delivering him to his cell strapped him down to a low stone slab that resembled a sacrificial plinth far more than a cot. “There’s nowhere I can go.”

“Quiet.”

“Can I get something to drink, at least?”

One of the stormtroopers pulled a flask from his utility belt, and then promptly dumped its contents over Ben’s head. Coughing, Ben mentally added the unknown soldier to the ever-increasing list of people who he wouldn’t be terribly upset about killing when he made his escape.

They left him there, the bright white lights covering the ceiling providing a stark contrast to the ancient, weathered stone and metal that made up the rest of his cell. It wasn’t doing his headache any favors, and even closing his eyes didn’t block the glaring brightness out completely. 

_ Empress Rey, _ he thought.  _ Just Rey. _

He was probably going to have to kill her, too.

Ben didn’t understand how someone so incredibly strong with the Force had managed to go undetected for so very long. Of course, given their surroundings, he supposed she’d had help. Maybe if Luke Skywalker hadn’t been so worried about his own  _ nephew— _

It wasn’t a good train of thought to pursue. It was unproductive.  _ Destructive. _ Not befitting of a Jedi, even a runaway failure of a Jedi like him. 

But Ben was feeling destructive. 

_ “You hold on to so much bitterness,” _ his uncle told him once during training.  _ “You let it blind you.” _

He hadn’t felt blinded; in fact, he’d felt in those moments that he saw the truth more clearly than ever. The bitterness was, at the very least,  _ honest _ \- something that his family had never been, letting him spend years imagining that he might actually be allowed to become a famous pilot like his father, that he might get to choose his own way.

Ben resented them for that, and he resented his own youthful optimism for believing it. When he’d found out the truth - the truth of his family, of his  _ destiny _ \- he should’ve run away right then and there. He shouldn’t have allowed them to send him away. Maybe if he’d never been trained in the use of the Force, the dark side wouldn’t have called to him so strongly. Maybe he wouldn’t be here now, strapped to a table and sedated, completely at the mercy of a mad Sith Empress.

He tried to struggle, but the straps were snug, and he was still weak and dizzy. It would only get worse, he was certain of that; the Sith were legendary for their unnatural experiments and their fondness for torture. Ben didn’t believe for a single moment that he was simply a political hostage. 

Rey wanted  _ him. _

People had been after Ben Solo’s power his entire life. He’d been the subject of numerous schemes and plots since before he’d even taken his first breath, and he’d come to believe that he’d be running until the day he died.

Of course, being strapped to a rock would make running much more difficult.

At the moment, he doubted that he’d be able to stand for long, even if he wasn’t strapped to a rock - so maybe it was good that he hadn’t figured out a way to escape yet, because he’d rather not pass out in the hallway of a Sith fortress. 

It sounded like something his dad would do.

His family was in trouble.  _ As usual. _ Hearing his mother’s voice over the crackling emergency transmission left him feeling far more helpless and fragile than he’d like to admit. There was anger there, too - anger that he couldn’t help them, anger that he couldn’t escape the burden of his lineage, no matter how much he tried.

“It’s the Skywalker blood.”

Ben tried to suppress any indication that she’d startled him, but the fact that the Empress had managed to slip into his cell unnoticed was disturbing. He opened his eyes and glanced over, wondering why she’d come alone. “Hello, Empress.”

The door closed behind her as she stepped closer, and whatever she’d done to manage to mask her presence seemed to vanish. He was hit with tendrils of sensation - fascination, mostly.  _ How flattering, _ he thought.

“Can I ask you something?” Ben asked, and she merely frowned in response. He really would’ve expected a Dark Lady of the Sith to have better control over her expressions. “Don’t you need an empire to be an empress?”

“The Sith Eternal’s influence might wax and wane over time, but the galaxy has always been ours, Ben Solo. Our Eternal Empire, waiting for someone strong enough to claim the throne.”

“It didn’t work out so well, the last time someone tried.”

Her temper flickered, tantalizing. Ben realized that he’d been unconsciously inclining himself towards her as she spoke, and he let his head fall back against the table, fixing his gaze on the ceiling. He needed to center himself, to resist the urge to provoke her. No good would come of it.

“You’re going to give me what I want,” she said. Her eyes were dark, and there was a certain flatness to them that unnerved him. “Skywalker is the last Jedi left to threaten the ways of the Sith Empire. I’m going to kill him and put an end to that  _ mighty _ bloodline, once and for all.”

“I can’t help you,” Ben said, feeling the biting need to rankle her calm demeanor as she stalked over to the cot where he lay bound. “I don’t know where he is. You’ve already seen that.”

“They’ll come for you.” She crouched beside him, her gaze raking down his face. “Luke Skywalker will come for you. Your  _ uncle.” _

“He won’t.”

She leaned close, too close, and an unfamiliar roil of something enticing spread through his veins when she brushed against him. “If they don’t, you’ll die. I’ll have you terminated, broadcasted on the HoloNet for the entire galaxy to see. I’ll do it myself.”

“No one would ever find me here, even if they were looking.”

“That’s right, Jedi,” she said, “but we won’t be staying here for long.”

“Good,” he replied. “I don’t really care for the decor.”

The Empress looked startled, and a little unsure of how to respond. He wondered if she’d ever heard a joke in her life, and he was suddenly very curious to see what it would look like if she actually smiled - a genuine,  _ pleasant _ smile, not one of her usual cold smirks.

“How long have you been here?” he asked abruptly. “In this place?”

For a moment, he thought that she wouldn’t answer. She leaned back - an unconsciously small gesture, one that Ben took to represent retreat. _ Good,  _ he thought. He wanted to see her squirm.

“Ten years,” she replied. “More or less.”

“You were just a child.”

“And how old were you when you began your training, Jedi?” She paced around him. “Why is your hair wet?” she asked suddenly, her lips twisting into a delicate scowl. “And you’re still bleeding.”

“I figured that was on your orders, Empress.”

“If I want you bleeding, Ben Solo, I’ll do it myself.” Her hand hovered by his cheek, but she seemed hesitant to touch him, and her fingers curled into a fist as she took a step back from the table.

“Comforting.”

“Do you really think that your family can afford to leave you here with me? Imagine the scandal. The New Republic already rests on pillars of sand, propped up by the Skywalker legacy, and you—”

“I’ve been missing for a long time,” Ben interrupted. “The stars are still shining. Like I said, Empress, I hate to be a disappointment, but—”

His jaw froze, his lips pressed tightly together, just as if she’d clamped her hand over his mouth to silence his interruptions. “I’ve felt you out there for as long as I can remember, Ben Solo. The power inside of you… it’s like nothing else in this galaxy. But you know that, don’t you? Even if you don’t want to admit it, you know. You know you were always meant to end up here, with me.”

The paralyzing grip on his face dissipated with a wave of her hand. “So, you aren’t going to kill me, then?” he asked, wishing that he didn’t know she could likely sense the way his heart was pounding, ready to beat out of his chest. 

Her brow furrowed. Ben was beginning to recognize that Empress Rey didn’t have much experience with humor, and it was something that he would’ve pitied her for, if she hadn’t had him drugged and strapped down to a highly uncomfortable stone cot.

“I will be disappointed if that becomes necessary,” she said. 

“You’re uncertain,” he told her. “Even with all of this, I can feel it.”

She took another step back, clearly unsettled. “You’re lying.”

“You know I’m not. I’ve always been good at picking up emotions. Luke Skywalker called me a ‘sponge,’ and he didn’t mean it as a compliment. Anger, fear, doubt, excitement… through the Force, they’re all so clear. And you,  _ Empress _ Rey, are confused. Your mind in chaos, your resolve wavering—”

Her jaw clenched, and so did her hand, and Ben blacked out.

~

The beeping of a droid woke him, and Ben flinched away, nearly falling off of the table. It took his sluggish mind a moment to realize that he was no longer strapped down to it, though cuffs bound his wrists. Groaning, Ben dropped his head into his hands. He was starting to suspect he was going to have a headache for the rest of his life.

The droid beeped again. 

“Hey,” Ben said, half-expecting the droid to jab him with some kind of needle. “You’re a C1-series astromech, aren’t you?”

It beeped again and spun, revealing a tiny tray attached to its back. It held a large bottle of what Ben sincerely hoped was ordinary drinking water, along with a generous supply of  _ two _ cal-bars.

He took it all, tearing into one of the cal-bars at once. “Tell the Empress I said thanks.”

It made a little whirr of surprise, then rolled out the door, which quickly slid closed behind it. Ben had no doubt that armed troopers were waiting to shoot him down if he dared to approach the doorway when it opened. He’d have to come up with a plan.

He’d have to come up with a plan, but  _ later, _ because he was so tired that he could barely see straight, and the bright lights and the oppressive silence only made it worse. He sat up, crossing his legs, trying to settle into a position that might lend itself to some semblance of meditation. 

She wanted his power, and she wanted to kill Luke Skywalker - no surprises there, really. He was sure that she planned to murder his mother, too; Leia Organa had been in the First Order’s crosshairs for years, and Empress Rey and the Sith Eternal who’d brought her to power would likely be even more fervent in their efforts.

Ben paced around his cell until he was convinced he was going to wear a hole in the floor. He’d have to ask for a bigger cage if she intended to keep him pinned up like a wild animal. He was already starting to  _ feel _ like a wild animal.

He lay flat on his back on the hard stone slab and imagined himself practicing his saber forms, and when that began to wear his patience thin, he turned to reciting poetry, silently at first, and then with as much vigor as he could muster, hoping that he’d drive whoever might be watching him on the security cameras mad, too.

_ "’What begins, ends. _

_ What is born, dies. _

_ All that is made can be un-made. _

_ Dark has no meaning without light, _

_ And for all living things _

_ there is the final _

_ silence.’" _

He got up and paced around the cell some more. It seemed to be getting smaller and smaller by the hour. She was toying with him, he knew, leaving him to languish, almost entirely severed from the Force, unsettled and thrown into doubts. He was going to make her pay for that, sooner or later.

Time stood still in the cell, and so Ben sat and stewed in an increasingly angry silence until his exhaustion outweighed his discomfort, toppling him into the blissful emptiness of slumber.

There was someone…  _ there.  _ Beside him. Ben turned his head and slowly opened his eyes, freezing when he found the dark eyes of the Empress staring back at him. He didn’t flinch, and neither did she. 

He licked his lips. He still hadn’t been given anything to drink since the lone bottle of water earlier in the day, and his throat was painfully dry. Her gaze fell to his mouth, then immediately snapped back to his eyes. 

“Why are you—?”

“What is this?” she said, her eyes narrowing. “What have you done?”

“What have  _ I _ done? This is you. This has always been you. In my mind. My  _ dreams—” _

“This is something different.” Hesitantly, she reached out, but then she seemed to think better of it. Her fingers curled as she rested her hand beside her face. 

Ben realized then that the wall of his cell seemed to have disappeared entirely; there was no way that there should’ve been room for both of them to fit on the narrow slab of his cot. She was there beside him… and yet, she wasn’t. He wondered if he was dreaming, but it didn’t  _ feel _ like a dream. He doubted he would’ve dreamed her up in her bedclothes, at any rate.

The Empress of the Eternal Empire looked quite a bit less intimidating in the thin black robe she slept in, lying curled on her side and apparently just as uncertain about their current situation as he was. If he’d had the time or the inclination, he could probably count every one of her long, dark eyelashes - another sign that they were far, far too close for comfort.

And he  _ wasn’t _ comfortable.

Yet… he didn’t feel the urge to recoil, either, despite the fact that he could feel the power of the dark side roiling inside of her, driving her towards her aims. Towards  _ him. _ It should’ve sent him running. If he’d been a better Jedi, he was certain that it would’ve. He wondered if she realized he could feel the storm raging inside of her, and if she could feel the same in him.

“Where are you?” Ben asked.

She sat up, then, so fluidly graceful that she reminded him of a serpent. Her brow furrowed as she seemed to stare at the wall behind him. “You can’t see,” she said. “Interesting.”

“Can you see my surroundings?”

“No,” she said, looking back at him. “Just you.”

**Author's Note:**

> I was going to hold off on posting this one until I'd gotten more stories finished... but I couldn't resist, so here we are! ;D


End file.
